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14. September 2011, 16:39:22
#25
~RocketMan~Quote
What's left of him anyway... I wanted to continue your little Earth thread but you really threw me for a loop with your blue-haired shodan and I was all like, WTF? so I decided to leave that alone lol.16. September 2011, 23:24:47
Somebody out there besides me and K's gotta have the ability to write a few cohesive sentences and use some sort of creativity... oh well, at least we scared away all the trolls. They wouldn't touch something like this with a 50 foot poll.#26
NV, I want to see all that coding logic in your brain put to a slightly different use
22. September 2011, 02:30:11
A small patch of forget-me-nots trembled sadly in a mound of Earth. Their fragile beauty, delicate blue petals naked and wonderful, the only remaining memory of life on Earth, was about to be erased by the sterility of SHODAN. For now though, the flower remained unaware, and James pretended he was as well. He breathed deeply, laying on his side and caressed the soft material with his fingers, imaging himself in some meadow. #27
The terra-un-forming process had begun without warning less than 24 hours ago and from its epicentre, circled the globe, transforming all matter into "potential", a new material from which energy could be extracted at unheard of efficiencies without refinement or processing. On the front of this wave of destruction, all non-human life was extinguished. SHODAN had left humans immune to the wave by entrapping them in a chrysalis of energy, in a comatose state. Those who hid, were left unprotected and became potential. Those who tried to flee into space...became potential. The skies were her domain too. The more potential there was on the surface, the larger her dominion. The potential, a white, crystalline substance, was also highly volatile and the compounds released into the atmosphere acted as a gaseous dielectric material that could localize static charge. In this way, organized circuits long since confined to wires and silicon, could exist in space by carefully distributing charge throughout the vapours of the potential. The wave had enveloped almost 100% of the planet and James was on the very last place on Earth to become extinct. By shear luck he had gone undetected until now but had paid the price of seeing everyone he knew and loved, desiccated only to be violated over and over again by SHODAN to serve her warped agenda.
The wave was about 100 feet away from where he was in every direction. Already he could feel the hair on his arms stand up as the potential crept closer. He continued looking at the beautiful flower in front of him, refusing to pay attention to the fate that crept ever nearer. He had seen enough of the gray, de-saturated sky. The vast desert of crystalline death was utterly featureless except for the white cocoons of the sleepers, half buried in the ground. All weather was gone and in its place, a wholly unnatural stillness took its place. SHODAN's every thought could be heard for miles, all at once as the sound waves filled him to overflowing. The only thing he could do to stay sane was to cradle and protect what mattered most. Though futile, he felt that if he died protecting something, he didn't have to lose all hope. He didn't have to feel as though he were plunging into hell head first. He would hold on and let destiny contend with that rather than submit to oblivion and doom the human race with affirmation. James took another deep breath and relaxed. He picked at a blade of grass and imagined the meadow. The tiny flowers smiled at him and he smiled back. Then the forget-me-nots were gone...turned to potential. James no longer had anything to protect. He had failed. He would have plenty of time to think about what he had done and to feel that guilt in the pit of his stomach. Frozen into position, he joined the rest of SHODAN's fawn.
04. January 2019, 16:43:02
The "Hacker", as he calls himself, deployed another bottle of Vodka from somewhere inside his coat. How deep are those pockets, I wondered? The blue-haired girl who ridiculously calls herself Shodan is squatting nearby against a brick wall, sucking deeply on an old-fashioned cigarette. #28
"Drink?" The hacker gestures the bottle to me for the second time. I grimaced briefly but then shrugged and took a healthy swig, nearly choking on the antiseptic-tasting shit. It'll slow my racing heart, I thought, and clear my sinuses to boot.
"Alright so what the hell is going on? Why am I here?"
"Chicken eggs", said Blue Hair from beneath me.
"Beg your pardon?"
"She's talking about how vaccines are made. You take a virus and incubate it in a chicken egg, weakening over successive replication cycles until it becomes suitable for injection in humans. That's what they call a live attenuated virus".
I raised my eyebrow.
"Fascinating", I said, growing irritated. I kept quiet though, suspecting he was going somewhere with this.
"That's basically what I did with her. That chip in her head - It's got a piece of SHODAN in it. A clever hacker always keeps a backdoor and that's what I did on Citadel. I made a copy of Shodan for myself... the essential code only you understand... and kept it safe all these years. Lately I've been playing with the idea of recreating her in a safe, contained space, to better understand the pathogenesis that is SHODAN. I designed her implant myself - took years. I wanted to make a neural link between a human being and Shodan without putting the human at risk. She volunteered for the experiment. I would have done it to myself but if something went wrong I'd be unable to analyze the data so..."
At this point he looked at Blue-Hair with a sort of sad half-smile and she broke with her Goth thing for just a moment and returned the gesture in kind. There was obviously a history there.
"Fortunately my gamble paid off. Shodan is still contained in that chip and we can now apply the human element to our analysis for the first time in a very intimate way. This has led to some groundbreaking discoveries about SHODAN's nature and potentially, about her weaknesses"
This was all too much to take in. I felt myself becoming light-headed and decided to take a seat next to Blue. As I crouched down, I interjected in the Hacker's monologue.
"So you've been growing a mini-Shodan in a human host in order to figure out how to kill her?"
The hacker took another swig of his precious Vodka and coughed a response.
"Huhhh... it's a bit more com....plicated than that but for now we can go with it."
Blue swivelled just then to peer around the corner and see if any of the agents had found us.
"We need to get moving soon", she said with slight urgency.
As the hacker put his bottle back into the abyss of his coat, she continued.
"Doctor, I can feel her. The pain, the drive behind it... it's intense."
My express was one of bewilderment. She looked at me with eyes of sincerity, eyes of longing. Perhaps her own experiences allowed her to connect with SHODAN on a very personal level that most of us yuppies couldn't appreciate. My gaze shifted over to the Hacker, who was now pacing back and forth, looking at his shoes. He sensed my attention was on him and turned to face me as I asked,
"What's this all got to do with Xerxes?"
The hacker opened his mouth to speak, hesitated a moment and decided to go back to pacing as he replied.
"Xerxes is special. It was designed in such away as not to succumb to the sort of unstable sentience that gave us SHODAN. More than that it has several security loopholes by design, so that it could always be shut down if necessary."
Blue got up and dusted off her mini. She seemed to be getting ready to move again. However I wanted to hear this part so I remained seated.
"Frankly I'm not concerned about Xerxes going haywire. But those loopholes allow for some interesting possibilities if SHODAN were to make a re-appearance"
A sharp pain went through my chest and I jumped to my feet.
"Re-appearance? What aren't you telling me? I thought you killed her!", I spat.
The hacker frowned.
"Yeah, well... so did I but there may have been a loose end...
...
...
Take this."
He hands me a very small device the size of a hypo, with an odd looking port at one end.
"I know you have questions but just keep this on you. If all goes well, you will never need to know what it is."
"And if things don't go well?", I pleaded to him with wide eyes.
"Then you'll be happy you have it on you", he replied in a nonchalant way, looking relieved.
"Come on. Let's get you home. The natives are getting restless."
He smiled and I felt a hand touch mine. Blue feigned a tiny smile of her own and we departed silently, in unison.
Whoah, a blast from the past! Legal stuff
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